


our once barren world now brims with life

by apuliae



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Father-Daughter Relationship, of making a home in jackson and other amenities
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:01:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23809540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apuliae/pseuds/apuliae
Summary: five things ellie hates about joel, and one she can't get enough of.or, making a home in jackson, through the normalcies of a newfound peace.
Relationships: Ellie & Joel (The Last of Us)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 72





	our once barren world now brims with life

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on a roll.  
> two-part fic, will try my best to post part two soon.
> 
> title is a quote from **sun** by sleeping at last, since they're my main source of inspiration lately. comments, constructive criticism, reviews, anything is always welcome. looking for a beta, because i'd really like to improve my writing and provide good content - so hmu!  
> hope you like it,  
> a.

There are a few things Ellie hates about Joel. It comes with living with someone, learning the things about them that absolutely wind you up. Ellie has become acquainted with quite a few of them about Joel, but the one that has been literally keeping her up at night is that the damn old man fucking  _ hogs the covers _ .

It’s such a mundane thing, one she hadn’t known about him while they were wandering the country looking for the Fireflies - they didn’t have many chances of lying in an actual bed with actual covers, and the only time they had a real duvet at their disposal was during winter, when she was caring for Joel and his life was hanging by a thread. So, you know, she didn’t really worry about him stealing the covers, because she just gave them all to him.

But now, in the chilly November nights of Jackson, Wyoming, she has to still her hands to keep them from acting off their own will and punch Joel’s arm with all the might she has.

They have been here for a few months now, having arrived when the warm weather of April was giving in to the humid air of May. 

Tommy welcomed them with happy tears threatening to overflow from his eyes. She remembers very little of that first day in Jackson, her memory a bit faded from the bittersweet relief of being safe - and from the shadow of the haunting question hanging over her head like a Damocles’ sword,  _ safe from what exactly? _

He assigned them a small two-story independent cottage he was saving up, but hadn’t really come around to renovating. “Running a city takes a lot of time, and we’ve been growing a lot, so I had to prioritize”, he meekly told them while walking them up the gentle hill where their cottage was perched on. It was the right amount of isolated, for them, near the concrete wall surrounding Jackson. It gave them privacy, space to recover, to adapt. 

Joel’s face had lit up briefly when he saw it. She could tell he was excited by the slight upward curve of his mouth, and how his eyes glimmered, and how he ran his hands on the wooden railing that decorated the porch in front of the house. She couldn’t place the exact moments when she had learnt that all those small things, those subdued signs, were happiness. She just knew.

So, the thing is, the house isn’t fully renovated. Joel had started putting it back in shape, but he was also on watch duty, and was appointed Jackson’s carpenter. Tommy told her that, back when the world was still a somewhat normal place, they worked as contract carpenters, whatever that meant, and apparently Joel was kind of a pro with woodwork. He still is, for all she knows, because everyone wants him to do this or that to their homes, and he ends up doing little to nothing for his own house.

Which is actually not true, since he completely renovated the basement, making it a functional storage space, and made the ground floor seem like an actual real house. Like the ones from the magazines she finds here and there scattered in old newsstands when she gets the chance to go with Joel on scavenging trips.

Still, he hasn’t completed the first floor. He got around to fix the plumbings (which were in a relatively good shape given the complete state of abandon they were in, or at least that’s what he says), and now they have two working bathrooms, which seems kind of too much for Ellie (“Who needs  _ two  _ bathrooms? Can’t we just use the one on the first floor for something else? Like, I don’t know, a library for my joke books”, she had whined, sweating profusely after an afternoon of helping him fix the shower and bringing tools up and down the stairs in the moist heat of August. To which he replied, a knowing smile tugging at his lips, “You’ll thank me when you’ll get older, kiddo”).

Anyhow, two working bathrooms, and  _ one  _ warm bedroom, since her window can’t properly close and the wall around it is covered with cracks that resemble a spiderweb. During summer that wasn’t much of a problem, and she settled in her room just fine - aside for the occasional nightly escapade in Joel’s bed after a particularly nasty nightmare - but now that the colder weather is approaching she refuses to freeze her ass when she can get a warm room. She’s independent, but she’s not stupid, duh.

So she has made him promise to fix it by the end of the month, and for now she’s just squatting in his room. And  _ still freezing her ass off, because Joel fucking hogs the covers _ . A lose-lose situation, really.

And that’s another one for the list of the things that Ellie hates about Joel. She isn’t a light sleeper, but she still wakes up thinking that the toes of her feet might fall off any moment now they’re so cold. She tried taking some of the duvet back, tugging at it, but Joel has an iron grip on the damned thing. She sits up, rubbing her arms to warm herself up, and pondering whether she should wake him up or just suffocate him with her pillow. 

She isn’t a light sleeper but Joel is, so when he feels her moving around he stirs, speaking with his eyes still closed.

“Why aren’t ya sleeping, kiddo?”

She resists the urge to punch him in the face once again, limiting her response to a curt “I’m freezing”.

He opens just one eye, and unfolds an edge of duvet, his voice rough with sleep when he speaks. 

“Then get under the covers”.

She could choke him. She slips under the blanket, relaxing slightly in the ghost of Joel’s warmth. 

“That’s more like it”, he says, closing his eyes. His breaths even out shortly after, and Ellie ponders for a second for how long she should hold the pillow on his face to kill him. But when he turns around and puts an heavy arm around her, scooting her closer, she falls asleep in a few seconds, a relaxed look on her freckled face.

  
  
  


She remembers one line from the diary of the girl who once must have lived in the cottage where she and Joel had that heart-wrenching conversation - an exchange she both can’t seem to fully forget but forces herself not to replay constantly in hear head after a fight with him - and that line read “Tragedy! I’m grounded for the next two weeks because Mom found out I’ve been sneaking out at night to see Matt. Now I have to wash the dishes, iron the laundry and can’t go out until she comes to her senses and recognized how much of a bitch she’s being right now”. 

Ellie always thought that that girl must’ve been the real bitch, but now she understands her. What happened was, she tried to cook, and almost set their kitchen on fire. She forgot a rag too close to the stove and it started burning, then she tried to put out the fire with some water but proceeded to knock the pan she was cooking their dinner in and burn herself. Joel was in the basement and, upon hearing the commotion, ran upstairs, a revolver in his hand and ready to kill whatever seemed to have Ellie scream - which was, case in point, the frying pan. 

So that night they had no dinner. What they had was a full-on fight, Joel reprimanding her for not being cautious enough, and Ellie rebutting that she can handle herself. It was ugly, and stupid, and it ended up with Ellie storming up to her room, slamming the door, and Joel feeling like he entered a stage in their relationship where he didn’t even dare to think they’d get. He was a father figure to a teenage girl. They had a stupid fight that ended with slammed doors. 

Long story short, she isn’t grounded - it’s not much use to ground someone during the apocalypse, especially when that someone doesn’t have what you’d call an  _ active social life  _ she can be withheld from. What could he do, forbid her from cleaning their guns or going to the pseudo-school they had in Jackson?

But they did agree that she shouldn’t go near the stove anytime soon, and Joel assigned her to what he called  _ dishes duty _ . Which, by the way, was an absolute nightmare, because now, every single time they eat, she has to wash the dishes. 

Ellie almost misses the canned soup meals, when she could toss the can away and call it a day. No, now Joel  _ cooks _ , and leaves the kitchen in an utter mess (that, she thinks, is her actual punishment, because the old man is  _ neat  _ in everything he does, so she hardly believes he isn’t so messy in his cooking for any other reason than to punish her). 

One night Tommy and Maria come over to their place for dinner. Maria helps Joel cook - they can’t do anything too elaborate, since their stoves run on gas and gas is hard to come by these days. A scavenging team managed to bring back to Jackson thirty gas cylinders in the span of a few weeks thanks to the lucky discovery of an old warehouse that seemed relatively intact and distributed them, but they wouldn’t last long if the cooking got out of hand.

While they wait, Tommy makes a point of delighting Ellie with a series of stories about Joel’s youth. Joel’s still in hearing range, so he occasionally shoots him a warning glare, that Tommy cheerfully ignores.

“So, we were in high school, right?, and Joel was kind of a heartthrob. Like, every girl in my class mooned over him, and he just wouldn’t spare ‘em a glance, the old fox”, Tommy giggles, taking a sip of the incredibly foul-smelling moonshine Gerard, a wrinkly Jackson resident, took an interest in brewing and distributing. 

He leans in, now whispering in a conspiratorial tone: “He knew he’d make them want him more”

Ellie laughs, wondering how Joel would’ve been like when he was younger. Lighter, she thinks. Happier. She looks over to the kitchen, where he’s cutting some carrots for a salad while Maria is microwaving the stew she brought over, having small talk and asking questions on how they’re finding Jackson so far. She thinks of how many times she’s seen him hold a knife to a bandit’s throat, slashing the tender skin, the gurgling sound they made when they died still engraved in her brain like a broken record - and now here he is, calmly putting together a side for their dinner. It’s kind of unsettling, but still she can’t complain.

“How was he?”, she finds herself asking, voice lowered so that only Tommy can hear her. “Before, I mean”.

She looks over to Tommy, who’s watching her with an unreadable expression, the glass of moonshine precariously placed over his knee. He sits in silence, for a few seconds, before taking another sip and leaning back into their battered couch - it has an ugly flower print and a dubious stain on the left back pillow, and she finds herself staring at that stain, avoiding Tommy’s eyes. 

“He was louder”, he finally says, with a small sigh. “He used to be louder. He cared for whom he loved deeply, and that didn’t change. The ways he cares for people did change, though”, and some bitterness seems to make its way into his words. 

Ellie finds herself clenching her fists and stealing glances at Joel, who’s quietly laughing at something Maria’s saying. 

“What do you mean?”

Tommy opens his mouth to answer but ultimately doesn’t. The silence stretches a few seconds too long to be comfortable, and Ellie almost gathers enough bravery to urge him an answer when Maria calls them to the table.

They eat sitting on mismatched chairs, conversation flying over Ellie’s head. She doesn’t join, and even though Joel doesn’t seem to mind her curt responses he still keeps checking her movements from across the table. She notices.

“So, how’s school going, Ellie?”

Ellie looks up from the salad leaf she’s been torturing with her fork, focusing on Maria. She shrugs.

“Ain’t too bad. Can’t really see the point in learning maths, but the botany lessons are alright”

Botany is just another name for Survival 101, as Joel likes to call it. They learn about edible plants and roots and berries, how to recognize a deadly mushroom from an innocuous one, how to hunt. 

“The hunting part is kinda boring, but I can make a mean deer trap now”, she offers, to which Maria looks satisfied enough. Weird times they live in, if an adult looks so happy to hear that a fourteen - almost fifteen - years old girl knows how to successfully kill a deer.

“Ellie’s an amazing shot with a bow, reckon she’d be a good teacher”

They both turn to Joel, who spoke, but isn’t looking up from his plate. 

Maria seems to ponder on that, slowly nodding. “Yeah, that could be a good idea. I can ask around if there’s any adults that can handle a bow, and see if they’re willing to teach along with Ellie”.

“I don’t know, I’m not  _ that  _ good”. Ellie returns to her tortured salad leaf. The idea intrigues her, but she doesn’t like being around the other kids. They’re too  _ sheltered _ , too naive, and they’re not even trying to hide the fact that she scares them. It might be what Tommy calls her constantly-brooding-face, but still. She doubts they’re going to follow any class she teaches.

“We’ll see about that. We can have a trial run, and see how it goes, how about that?”

Ellie shrugs again, and stands up to gather their plates. Maria turns to Joel now, taking arrangements for this impromptu archery class - something Ellie is convinced she’s  _ not  _ fit for. She can take her shots, but she’s never taught anyone. Knowing her temperament, she might as well just place an arrow in every Jackson kid’s back.

She start to place the dishes in the sink, already loathing the next half hour she’ll spend scrubbing the stew from Maria’s pot, but Joel’s hand is on her shoulder, stopping her.

“Leave the dishes for tonight, I have a surprise for you”.

That perks her curiosity. Ellie glances at Tommy and Maria, that are looking suspiciously like the cat that ate the canary, still sitting at the dining table, pointedly avoiding her eyes. 

“What?”

Joel ushers her towards the front door, with a sibilline “You’ll see”.

March’s crisp evening welcomes them on the porch. Joel walks down the steps of the porch, kneeling behind the fence, picking something up from the bushes that grow around the house. When he walks up to her, carrying something in his hands, she gasps.

She hears the scratching of Maria and Tommy’s chairs when they get up to join them, but she doesn’t even notice them when they come up behind her. 

Joel is holding a guitar. It looks old, the wood of the sounding board chipped at the edges and the color of the lacquer that once coated the instrument faded and dulled out, but it’s whole. 

“We need to find new strings, ‘cause these are a little worn out, but-”

“That’s amazing, Joel!”, she almost shouts, jumping over to Joel and basically crushing into him. He braces for the impact, barely preventing the guitar from slipping and holding it by its neck, an arm wrapped around her.

“Glad you like it, kiddo. Told ya I’d teach you how to play”.

“Now ya gotta serenade us, big brother!”, Tommy exclaims, clapping his hands loudly and earning an affectionate shove from Maria, accompanied by an only half serious “You’ll wake everyone up, shut that oven”.

“Yeah, you wish”, Joel chuckles, unwrapping Ellie from his embrace. “You ain’t got that kinda cash, Tommy”.

“We found it, we make the call”, Tommy shrugs, leaning on the front door’s frame with his arms folded. 

“And you promised me to sing if I got you out of the university alive back in Colorado, so you owe me”, Ellie follows, her words slipping out before she can control them. 

Joel looks down to her, something she doesn’t want to call pain flashing in his eyes. His shoulders slump imperceptibly, and she regrets mentioning Colorado immediately. It’s not the wound, and it’s not the memory of the feverish moments when she was certain he was going to die and leave her alone that make her stomach churn and the savory stew Maria made threaten to come back up her throat, but what followed. The loneliness, the utter terror every time Joel’s breath hitched, the hypothesis of death, the cold. Winter. 

A moment of silence follows, Tommy shifting uncomfortably from the doorframe and Maria looking confused. Joel keeps staring at Ellie, a stare that she can’t decipher, but that burns through her skin. 

When he looks away, she feels like she can breathe again.

“Well, I don’t recall making any promises, but since you’re all so eager to get deaf, I might play something…After Ellie finishes the dishes”.

“Oh, c’mon!”, she protests, following him when he makes his way into the living room. He gently places the guitar on the couch, turning to her with his hands resting on his hips. Tommy called that his dad-pose once, a few weeks back, and Ellie still doesn’t know what to make of that comment.

“We have a deal. I cook, you take the dishes, no one burns the place down. You keep your word, Ellie”, he answers, circling the couch and sitting next to the guitar. He is stone-faced, and she can’t tell if this is payback for the burned rag, or an out for a conversation they don’t want to have in front of Tommy and Maria.

Had she known, she’d have fed him raw meat. At least she would have avoided the dishes.

But with the ghost of Colorado still hanging in the air, she doesn’t feel like arguing. She set herself up for failure, really. When Tommy makes a backhanded comment to Joel about tough love and the hardships of educating a teenager, chuckling at Joel’s following glare, the tiniest bit of tension melts in Ellie’s stomach. She washes the dishes in silence - and she hates it, mind you, she fucking despises it - but there’s a little smile tugging at the edges of her lips, and the low chattering in the living room makes it a little more bearable. 

She can live with that.


End file.
